


Verdant

by MagusLibera



Series: Any Happy Stories [5]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Caring, Cooking, Fix-It, Gen, Growing Up, Quarantine and Chill Fic Drive (Arrow TV 2012), Smoak Queen Family, lucas-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23428741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagusLibera/pseuds/MagusLibera
Summary: Lucas loves his family. He mostly loves looking after them. His favourite way to do that is to cook for them.Can be read as a one-shot or as part of the Any Happy Stories/SCoM universe. Previously titledThe Empath and the Chef.
Relationships: Minor Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak - Relationship, Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak, background Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Series: Any Happy Stories [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601401
Comments: 21
Kudos: 46
Collections: Quarantine and Chill Fic Drive 2020





	Verdant

**Author's Note:**

> I'm counting this as completing the fix-it prompt for the Q&C fic drive because this universe is a premature fix-it and I'm happily pretending that SCoM is how the finale ended.

Lucas loves looking after people. It is his favourite thing. To know that something he has done has made somebody’s life a bit easier or nicer is the greatest feeling for him, but never more so than when that person is somebody he loves.

He has been lucky in his life. His parents provided him with a big, loving family full of quirky individuals for him to lavish with his love. They gave him four siblings, all of whom are completely unique and entirely perfect. They gave him a happy, safe childhood and let him know that he should always be himself, even when he was teased for being so quiet in school. They gave him aunts and uncles and five wonderful cousins, though he knows better than to refer to the Diggle children as his cousins in front of Mia. She says it makes her feel icky. Lucas knows why, Mia does not yet.

Felicity always says that his love of caring for people is because he is so empathetic. Even as an infant, he had been incredibly attuned to the emotions of the people around him. He always knew when Mia and Tommy were building up to a fight and could often calm the two of them before it got too bad. He could always cheer Mia up whenever she was frustrated at herself for not nailing something in a lesson with Aunty Nyssa. He could always calm Tommy down when his twin was growing rowdy at an inappropriate time. He was always the person Ada wanted whenever the world was overwhelming her, because his quiet nature would help her to block it out and refocus.

And he vaguely remembers a time, about a year before Ada’s birth, when his parents had been sad and tense. He remembers finding his mother sniffling in his parents’ bed and going over to her, climbing onto the bed and just holding her quietly until she stopped, kissed him on the head and got herself up. Whenever his father would have a flashback or a panic attack, he would hide it from Lucas and his siblings, not wanting to scare any of them. But Lucas remembers many times when he did notice, and he would take his dad’s hand and just hold it steadily, squeezing when required to ground his dad and bring him back to the room.

With William, Lucas would know whenever he was feeling separate, whenever his old fears were rearing their heads and his big brother would need reminding of his importance to their family. Of how loved he is.

Lucas was the middle child, but he was also the middle ground for the siblings. He was the one that none of the rest would ever really argue with. The one that they came to for support and for help. He was the one who kept them all together whenever he was needed and who made sure that each of his siblings had what they needed.

So it came as a surprise to absolutely nobody when Lucas was two years old and demanded that Oliver teach him how to cook so that he could help to make something special for Momma’s birthday.

*************************

Cooking became Lucas’ thing. Oliver would often sigh at how woefully dreadful his children were in the kitchen, wondering aloud as to how so few of them got his cooking skills and so many got Felicity’s.

William was okay at it but was always too taken with his computers to develop his skills beyond the basics. Mia was hopeless to such an extent that not only did their dad give up on trying to teach her to cook but he also banned her from the kitchen altogether after a particularly unfortunate incident involving boiling water and, miraculously, a kitchen fire. Tommy never cared enough to try, having absolutely no taste for what goes well together and making some well-made but hideous dishes as a result. And Ada had the skill for it and was actually very good at baking but would often be overwhelmed by everything happening in a kitchen, particularly with her aversion to so many basic foods, so kept away too.

But Lucas… Lucas was Oliver’s little prodigy. Not in the same way as Mia. Lucas’ fighting skills, like the skills of all of Oliver’s children, were good enough to keep him safe but he was by no means a fighter. No, Lucas and Oliver would spend hours together in the kitchen, whipping up delicious meals and baked goods for their family and experimenting with new flavours and combinations. They had more than enough willing taste testers to munch on their – mostly successful – creations.

Lucas came to life whenever he talked about food. In school, he would daydream about what he could do next. At home, he would absorb cooking books and study every recipe he could get his hands on, breaking them apart bit by bit with his dad. They would go out for meals and Lucas and Oliver would play a game to identify all of the ingredients in their meals before recreating the dishes at home.

That was not to say that Lucas did not have other interests. He did. He loved science, more specifically, he loved chemistry. He would bug his mom for hours, asking about different chemicals and their properties, trying to learn everything that he could about them. When he discovered food science, it was like an epiphany. His two greatest loves combined to form one perfect topic and Lucas knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

*************************

He works hard all through high school to get the best grades possible. In the end, he leaves home a year before Mia does, at sixteen, and heads to university to study a food science degree not far from home.

During his degree, he takes every job in restaurants that he can manage, building up his experience in a working kitchen even as he develops his understanding of why the food that they are making works in the way that it does. He hates being away from his family. He finds it hard to connect with any of his classmates as they see him as strange. He is quiet and reserved, he has no free time thanks to the jobs that he works and he is not a huge fan of going out partying anyway, never having enjoyed it much when Mia and Tommy would drag him out.

In his third year, he moves back home. It increases his commute but he is tired of being around people he barely gets on with all the time and it means that he gets to spend more time with Ada, who he knows has been struggling since Tommy moved out when the two of them were seventeen and she was alone with their parents. University takes four years for him, in which time he gets a bachelors and a masters but he decides to stay on. An idea comes to him and he uses it as the basis of his doctoral research.

He trains with chefs the entire time, learning everything that Oliver had not taught him and honing his skills until he is finally ready. By the time he has his doctorate, Mia has finally got her own place and left William in peace (much to his external delight and internal dismay), Tommy has gotten a job in Star City and Ada is already done with university too, so the only sensible option is for him to move to Star City to be with his siblings and open his restaurant.

He takes over the foundry where his parents once ran their vigilante operation and turns it into a beautiful restaurant, naming it after the club that had once been his dad’s and then his aunt’s – Verdant. There, he serves some of the most experimental and delicious food in the city and the business booms within no time. The busy kitchen and dining floor keeps the activities in the basement hidden perfectly. Keeping his siblings safe like that, even if it is just in a small way, and providing them with the food that they need to keep up their strength and protect their city is his proudest achievement.

But no matter how popular the restaurant becomes, his most loyal and frequent customers are always, always his siblings. For as much as he loves taking care of them, he has been known to forget to look after himself, so they are always there to remind him to go home, to stop playing with his food, they are always there to love him too.

And they always have their parents too.

**Author's Note:**

> This week is Autism Awareness Week. The National Autistic Society ([@Autism](https://twitter.com/Autism) on Twitter) is a great place to start if you want to know more about what it's like to be autistic or love somebody who is and my dms are open on Twitter if you want any recommendations or just to chat about anything. I'm [@MagusLibera](https://twitter.com/MagusLibera).
> 
> Please stay safe, wash your hands and stay inside as much as possible. Please remember your fellow humans who will also be going through a tough time right now.


End file.
